Spoilers below if you haven't watched episode two of
the third season of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,"
titled "Kimmy's Roommate Lemonades."

"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" put a lot of consideration into
its homage to Beyoncé's internet-breaking "Lemonade" album and
film (or, if you prefer, "visual album").

"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" stars Ellie Kemper as Kimmy,
who has restarted her life in New York City after being held
captive for 15 years by a crazy cult leader. Kimmy's over-the-top
roommate is Titus (Tituss Burgess).

"Titus very rarely lets people see the real Titus and I
think Kimmy is someone who gets to see that over the years,"
"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" cocreator Robert Carlock recently
told Business Insider. "A big goal for Titus this season is
kind of taking that armor of fabulousness off, but not at the
expense of the character and what he was going through."

On the third season of the Netflix comedy, which debuts
Friday, Titus hits a rough patch with his boyfriend
Mikey (Mike Carlsen) and they end up breaking up. The show's
producers knew that Titus would need to express his feelings
about the relationship's end in an epic way.

"We asked ourselves how Titus would deal with this kind of
thing," Carlock said. "He would have to express it with the
fabulousness of Beyoncé. So in the same way that visual album
told a story, we wanted to use it as a framework to tell Titus'
similar journey. So to us that was his story in the episode and
it wasn't going to be just a little copy of 'Lemonade.'"

The show went all out. Cocreator Tina Fey wrote the episode
and her husband, composer Jeff Richmond, wrote and
composed the episode's songs.

"We had a lot of meetings about what visual things do we
want to try and parallel to make that connection the real album
deals with and connecting into the similar journey Titus has,"
Carlock said.

Helmed by veteran TV director Tristram Shapeero, the
episode parodied the underwater
opening for "Hold Up" by shooting at a Jewish Community
Center's pool and replacing the women from Beyoncé's take with
Barbie dolls, which Titus collects on the show. The show
also shot with an actual city bus at its soundstages in
Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

"Tristram Shapeero also directed the pilot and has done a
bunch of episodes for us," Carlock said of the director. "He just
went in with a very clear plan about how to do our
version."

In the same vein of Beyoncé's project, the show producers
wanted to keep the parody secret. It was tough and almost got out
while they were shooting on the street in Brooklyn. Someone
from a local business posted a few seconds of
Burgess in the yellow dress on Instagram.

"One of our producers went to the business and asked
them to please take it down, which I think they did very
nicely," Carlock said. "We didn't want that to get out too soon.
But it's tricky to be walking around Brooklyn breaking car
windows in a giant yellow dress and try to keep it a secret.
Although, you know, New York absorbs that kind of stuff pretty
easily."